


Stray Spider

by Aryashi



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, M/M, Set in Episodes 159-160 | Scottish Safehouse Period (The Magnus Archives), The Lonely would do some shit to daemons y'all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:08:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23796658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aryashi/pseuds/Aryashi
Summary: Before everything, Celidae’s favorite place was buried in Martin’s hair. Trapdoor spiders don’t move from their burrows much, content to stay in one place and let their prey come to them. It meant she didn’t need to cram herself into an insect daemon lanyard most of the time, instead watching things from Martin’s not inconsiderable height. So long as he didn’t go banging the top of his head on anything, Celidae was more than safe.Peter hadn’t liked that.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 28
Kudos: 448





	Stray Spider

The train up to Scotland is crowded. The compartments with actual breathing space are booked weeks in advance by people with larger daemons, who need the accommodations much more desperately than Jon and Martin do. On paper, at least. After the week, month, hell, the entire _year_ that Martin has had, he suspects he could make a pretty stirring case for some privacy and room to breathe. He doesn’t though. That kind of argument would draw attention, even if Martin had the energy to attempt making it.

So Martin and Jon stand up in a crowded compartment, full to the brim with commuters and their daemons. Martin’s keeping as much distance as possible from a poor woman and her great dane daemon that got stuck near the door. A haphazard collection of bags surrounds them; two backpacks, a rolling suitcase, and Jon’s shoulder bag. None of it looks like it belongs together, but it's what they had on hand. Enough clothes and supplies to last a few weeks away from everything.

Martin looks around half heartedly for an open seat, but of course there aren’t any. Those were all taken yonks ago, he’s sure. After all the walking Martin’s had to do his feet are killing him and he can only imagine how Jon’s doing. He did a lot of actual running, and the leg the worm went into bothers him. Jon pretends it doesn’t, but Martin notices. Zotru’s fur always puffs up when it aches. It’s an odd sight, her black hackles raised even while she’s practically boneless around Jon’s neck. Half asleep. Jon’s leaning against Martin, an exact match to his bone tired black cat. Jon’s still holding Martin’s hand. He’s barely let go since he grabbed it in the Lonely. 

Celidae sits on Martin’s backpack, watching Jon. Her eyesight isn’t the best, but the little spider can still see movement and they can’t relax just yet.

She hasn’t touched him. Hasn’t even tried to. Martin’s grateful.

The flight from London was a blur. Meeting up with Basira, hashing out a plan, running off to various apartments most of them hadn’t seen in weeks. Martin’s had a layer of dust covering everything, looked like an abandoned showroom. Celidae had watched him gather up some things from the kitchen counter. She hadn’t talked to him, and Martin hadn’t talked to her.

They were probably going to have to address that at some point. Later. Some far off, distant later.

Jon squeezes Martin’s hand, and Martin squeezes back.

* * *

Daisy’s safehouse lives up to its name. Daisy (as Martin remembered her) hadn’t given a single damn about comfort. The safehouse was a place for her to hide out, or hole up if she had a hunt to do in the area. If the stains in the bathroom grout are anything to go by, she probably had a few cases of ‘full operational discretion’ in these very walls. Martin tries not to dwell. The other part of it living up to its name, is that Daisy’s safehouse feels very _safe._ The walls are thick, the doors all individually lock (keys and deadbolts both), and Zotru found a truly ridiculous collection of knives under the bed.

“You think the windows are bulletproof glass?” Martin jokes as he stuffs some shirts into the middle drawer of Daisy’s dresser, right next to Jon’s.

“She thought about it,” Jon says while making the bed, “but the expense and expertise she would have needed to get them installed, in a small town like this? Too much attention. Better to just limit how much anyone could see through them, hence the blackout curtains.”

There’s an uncomfortable pause. Zotru licks her paw, then realizes she’s doing it, and realizes Martin is looking at her. She hops off the nightstand and slinks closer to Jon. 

“Sorry,” he says, a nervous hand scratching Zotru’s ears. “I’m. Trying? But things… they slip through the cracks.”

“Hey, s’alright. I mean, I did ask.”

“Even so--”

“Do you think it’d help if we um... Both limited the questions? At least for a while. Help get our bearings.”

Jon and Zotru exchange a look. “I can’t help but think that will make conversations very awkward.”

Martin shrugs. “After everything else, I think we can handle a little awkward.” He smiles. Jon smiles back. Zotru looks around the room, seeming a little like a loose end. For a second Martin wonders what could’ve caught her attention, and then he realizes she’s looking for Celidae. Wants to interact with her like Martin’s interacting with Jon. Martin vaguely knows she’s in the living room, poking around the backside of the cabinet. He has no strong feelings about this. At least, he didn’t. Until just now.

“I’m gonna make tea,” Martin says, moving the conversation forward before the moment hangs too long. “And I’d…. like to know... if you’d want some.” He wrinkles his nose. “Urg. How’d you ever get used to that, it sounds horrid.”

Jon laughs. “Try getting used to it when you have an Eldritch God of Prying nestled in your mind.”

Zotru pipes up “Have to think twice about everything you want to say. It’s maddening!”

Jon shushes her, and Martin smiles as he walks out of the room. As he washes out the dusty old kettle, Martin doesn’t think about Celidae hiding in dark corners.

* * *

“Heading down to the shops!” Martin calls out, kicking his shoes into place and raising a scarf over his face. “Need anything in particular?”

Jon hums noncommittally, lost in a technical manual Daisy had stashed away. Zotru’s nestled in his lap, reading right along with him with bright and focused eyes. They make quite the picture, reading in tandem on Daisy’s beat up couch, curled up in one of Martin’s jumpers. Martin’s making a mental note to keep an eye out for more books when Jon makes a startled noise.

“Zotru, wha--?!” but she’s gone, off like a shot. Martin looks back to Jon.

“What was that about?”

Jon runs a hand through his hair. “I don’t--”

But then she comes barreling back into the room, a small and squirming shape in her mouth.

“Zo! Put me down! This really isn’t--!”

“‘E wzz bou’ oo wak ou he ‘oor wifoou ou!” Zotru says around the large amount of squirming trapdoor spider in her mouth. Jon turns back towards Martin suddenly, with his most piercing look. The kind that makes Martin feel like he’s being skinned alive.

“I’d like to know what she just said,” Martin says. It comes out cold and snapping.

“She said you were about to leave without her.”

Martin looks at Jon. Jon looks at Martin.

Celidae squirms some more. “Zo, really, this isn’t a big deal, put me _down--”_

Zotru does put her down, but she also puts a paw on her abdomen. Lightly, put the intention is clear. “Celidae, I can’t keep doing this! You haven’t said a word to Martin the entire time we’ve been here! He _forgot_ you! That’s not okay!”

“It’s _fine,_ stop _hovering_ so much.” Celidae wriggles her legs, but doesn’t try to get away just yet.

Jon’s moved from the couch, book forgotten in his hand. Martin watches his face, reading all the worry and self-recrimination Jon wears so well. Martin can almost hear Jon thinking _how did I not notice something was wrong?_

Except nothing _is_ wrong. Celidae and Martin have it under control.

“Alright, alright, crisis averted, yeah?” Martin says with a casual smile. “I’d forget my own head if it wasn’t attached.”

“Martin--”

“Jon, you sure you didn’t want anything?”

The thing Martin learned a long time ago, and that has carried him pretty far in life, is that people don’t like confrontation. More often than not, if you give them an out, they’ll put off difficult conversations into the far future. Especially if difficult conversations were never their forte to begin with. People love to pretend that everything is fine. Martin knows he does too. It’s mutually beneficial that way.

Zotru lifts a paw, and Celidae scuttles forward. Martin lowers the tail of his scarf to the floor, and she climbs up easy as anything. She settles on the knot of cloth near Martin’s neck. Celidae doesn’t make her way into Martin’s hair. Martin feels Jon and Zotru’s eyes on him as he closes the door behind him.

Celidae doesn’t say anything the entire trip, and Martin ignores the low fog clinging to his heels.

* * *

Before everything, Celidae’s favorite place was buried in Martin’s hair. Trapdoor spiders don’t move from their burrows much, content to stay in one place and let their prey come to them. It meant she didn’t need to cram herself into an insect daemon lanyard most of the time, instead watching things from Martin’s not inconsiderable height. So long as he didn’t go banging the top of his head on anything, Celidae was more than safe.

Peter hadn’t liked that.

Martin knew, vaguely, that Peter had a daemon of some kind. “Oh, he’s out there somewhere,” he’d say, with that same chipper blankness he discussed the weather, or asked about invoices.

So Martin bought a lanyard. Kept Celidae in a box around his neck, cut off from the world. Peter liked that better, but he’d made some pointed comments. “Hard to be properly alone with a little voice right there with you all the time,” he’d say.

Martin hadn’t had a very long range, before. Four feet at best. But as time went on, he started leaving the lanyard on his desk when he went to the shelves. Then when he went to the bathroom. Then when he went down to accounting to get some paperwork. It didn’t feel like proper stretching. It felt… like a disconnect. Like Martin barely had a daemon at all.

Celidae became quieter and quieter. She used to say the things Martin wouldn’t let himself. Voice all his frustration, pointing out when things were unfair, if only so Martin could hear it outside his head. Not anymore. Now she sat, said nothing, and waited.

When Peter took him into the Lonely, Celidae was left on the floor of the Panopticon, bleeding thin lines of golden dust in a shattered plexiglass box.

* * *

Martin remembers reading somewhere that couples take on aspects of each other over the course of a relationship. He’s certain now that it must be true, because Jon springs his trap at exactly the right moment.

“Martin.”

“Hm?”

The light is honey soft. Daisy’s blackout curtains are open wide, letting in the sunset glow. Jon is curled up against Martin’s side, and they’re both wrapped up in a blanket Martin spotted in the second-hand shop in the village. It's ugly as sin, a quilt made of far too many clashing patterns to actually come together, but it was thick and soft as anything. Zotru must’ve agreed, because she’s curled up in Jon’s lap, on top of the quilt. When she shifts, Martin can feel it. It's dizzying being so close to her.

“If it’s alright… I’d like to talk about something.”

“Sure,” Martin says in a fond haze, “Fire away.”

Jon takes a deep breath, sighs it out, and that’s when Martin realizes he’s made a mistake.

“About Celidae.”

Everything inside Martin clenches. “What about her?”

Reluctance obvious, Jon sits up. The warm comfort of the afternoon bleeds out like a stuck pig. Martin can feel the temperature plummeting and his thoughts going sharp, thorny, defensive, but he doesn’t know how to stop it.

Zotru doesn’t move from her spot on the quilt. She’s looking at Martin instead.

Jon chews over his words. Almost literally, because whenever he’s thinking very, very carefully about what he wants to say, he bites his lip. Works the soft skin with his teeth until it's red, like if he just breaks it open the perfect words will spill out along with his blood.

“I… I’ve noticed. That you seem reluctant to be in the same room with her.” While Jon isn’t meeting Martin’s gaze, Zotru stares at him openly. She’s normally so in sync, a practical mirror of Jonathan’s moods. Seeing him hesitant and her steadfast is strange. Stranger is that Martin doesn’t know what it means.

“We’re in the same room right now.”

“Oh,” Jon says, meeting sharpness with sharpness. “So you do know where she is.”

“Of course I--” and Martin stops. Because he doesn’t. He knows vaguely that she’s in the room. Maybe somewhere in the kitchen area? But that’s a deduction, and he only knows because Celidae was on the counter when he woke up this morning and couldn’t have gone very far on her own. Beyond that? Martin has no earthly idea. She could be crouched in the garbage disposal.

That thought doesn’t bother him, and _that_ bothers him immensely.

“She’s on top of the fridge,” Zotru says. “That’s been her spot, for the past couple days.”

“I didn’t ask.”

“You didn’t need to.” Jon approaches, shifting over towards Martin on the small, lumpy couch. Zotru shifts along with him. “Martin, I-- I don’t know how to help. But speaking from an immense library of personal experience, ignoring a problem doesn’t make it go away. And… neither does hiding it. If you don’t want to talk about it right now, that’s okay. But, but _please_ know I-- me and Zotru both, we want to be here for you. You _and_ Celidae.”

There are a lot of things Martin could say in response to that. They dance on the tip of his tongue, honed over the course of his tutelage under Peter. Things meant to drive people far away; accusations, dismissals, or even kinder instruments like light sarcasm, all meant to remove this hook Jon has in Martin’s gut. Leave him untethered again. Free to float into the fog.

That last though clinches it for Martin.

“... yeah. Yeah, yeah. Do…” Martin swallows. “Do you think Zotru could…” Before Martin can even finish the request, she’s off like a shot. A streak of black leaps from the quilt to the floor, to the counter, finally squeezing her way between the top of the fridge and the ceiling. Jon flushes, embarrassed by his daemon’s enthusiasm, but Martin can’t help but be endeared. His soul is an eager and caring thing, at the end of it all.

This time, Zotru doesn’t return with Celidae squirming in her mouth. Instead she’s perched on Zotru’s head, right between her ears. Old Martin probably would’ve squealed, seeing their daemons being so cute, so intimate. Imagine, that Old Martin, who thought Zotru would never get within 50 feet of a soul shaped like a spider. A fraction of that warmth fills him now, but it is still warm.

Zotru lowers her head, and Celidae carefully climbs onto the ugly quilt.

For a long moment, nothing happens. Celidae and Martin regard each other. Jon and Zotru watch them. The sun dips lower over the horizon, and the light shifts into dimmer hues. Martin’s briefly possessed by the absolutely bizarre urge to make _small talk_ with his _soul._ To try and break the tension with innanites like the weather, or what shows she’s been binging on Netflix.

That’s about when Martin realizes that there is tension to break. It’s not a cold fog of indifference between them. Martin looks at his daemon, and sees how she’s pulled her legs in close to her body. How her pedipalps shift, twitching in constant motion. How her hard to read gaze isn’t pointed up into his eyes, but instead focuses on Martin’s chest. 

“Celidae?”

She twitches. For the first time in a long while Martin feels flickers through their connection, acidic like the faintest remains of bile in the back of his throat.

“I--” Martin fumbles. Stops, and tries to think. “Celidae… Is. Is there anything you want to--”

“Don’t.”

He stops.

“Just. _Don’t._ I can’t. I can’t…”

The bile isn’t faint anymore. His connection _burns,_ burns like toxic sludge, eating away at him. Martin reels back like he’s been socked in the jaw, and before he can think better of it his mouth is forming another question.

“Celidae, what--”

Celidae rears up and _hisses,_ her fangs glistening in the dim light of evening. “ _Shut up!”_ She screams. “Shut _up,_ you stupid, useless, pigeheaded fucking _idiot!”_

Martin supposes Jon and Zotru do or say something in response to that. Martin can’t tell you what, because his entire world has shrunk down to Celidae and her shaking fury.

“You don’t get to talk to me! Not like that! Not after what you did! What you almost did to me! To _us!_ We agreed that Peter was awful. That we had to keep him close to keep him away from the rest of the Institute. But you, you just kept _playing along,_ falling further and further away and-- you _promised_ me! Never a lanyard! You promised you wouldn’t hide me! You _promised_!”

It’s so much. Celidae’s voice carries only half of the onslaught; her rage and betrayal soak into his chest, gnaw into his vital organs. It's all Martin can do to sit there and breathe through the half-eaten remains of his lungs.

“But it was for the plan. It was to satisfy Peter, to learn more about the Extinction, to keep up appearances-- so many good reasons. So I said yes. And you put me in a _box_.”

“When did you first forget? When was the first time you _forgot me?_ Do you even remember? You can lie all you like Martin but you can’t lie to me. You knew what you were doing. You knew what was happening. You _knew_ what Peter was preparing us for. Another Lonely Lukas with an empty lanyard around his neck. Another daemon wandering the Forsaken forever. Maybe he’d even let you marry into the family proper! Martin Lukas would have been a perfect member of their happy fucking _Cult_ of _Isolation_.”

“I didn’t even feel you go into the Forsaken. You’d already cut me off. Didn’t have the courtesy to die properly before leaving me behind. Leaving me on the floor in that _goddamn box._ ”

“You hurt us. You hurt yourself. You hurt _me._ I can’t--! I can’t go back to normal after that! It was always my job to hate the people who hurt you, especially when you couldn’t! I hated Peter, I hated Tim, I hated Dad, I hated Mom, I hated _Jon!_ I hated Jon while you cried at his bloody bedside! I hated him, even when all I wanted in the world was to climb into Zo’s fur and burrow, find what was wrong and weave it fixed, stay there for the rest of time. I hated Jon when you couldn’t, Martin Blackwood. And now… now I hate _you._ I hate you. _I hate you.”_

Spiders don’t breathe. They don’t gulp in oxygen after exerting themselves. Martin does that for her. He blinks, and feels for the first time the tears dripping down his face. When had he started crying? It took no effort on his part. Martin’s tears fall without his input. An automatic reaction to his soul ripping out his heart.

For one terrifying moment, one sickening flash of weakness, all Martin wants to do is stand up and walk into the fog. Leave this horrible moment, and these horrible feelings. Sink back into the gentle fear of being alone forever.

Only for a moment. Instead, he reaches for his daemon. Slowly, slowly. Celidae doesn’t flinch away. She doesn’t move closer either. Martin’s fingertip makes contact with the tiny bristles on her front leg, and it pinches like a static shock. Martin sucks in air through his teeth. Celidae scuttles back.

“Martin?”

Jon’s there. Jon’s been there the whole time. Sitting on the same couch. Martin turns to him, thinking about how he must look like an utter mess, who can’t even touch his daemon anymore. What a sight he must be. Jon’s face doesn’t look pitying, though. A small frown, and pinched together eyebrows. His thoughtful expression. No, more than that. The face he made when he wanted to solve a problem. Zotru’s approaching Celidae.

“Celidae,” she says softly. “I have something I’d like to try, if that’s alright.”

Celidae can’t nod. But her pedipalps move up and down in sync, and Zotru knows what that means. Martin watches as Zotru lowers her head, and Celidae climbs up on it. Slowly, one leg at a time. But she does it, and Zotru waits for her to get settled.

A hand gently touches Martin’s arm. The strange, puckered yet smooth scarring catches oddly on his sleeve, and Martin feels comfort and support filling him up. Jon checks for confirmation, and when he sees Martin’s face, leans in close and wraps his arm around him.

Zotru approaches now, with Celidae on her head. Martin feels her paws through the quilt, hyper aware of the weight of Jon’s daemon. It’s so close, Martin feel’s his breath catch in his throat. She’s _right there._ Jon’s soul is practically in his lap. That’s a lot. That’s important. But it’s not the most important thing.

Martin takes a second to really look at her. The short hairy bristles all over her body. Her eyes, dark and spotting her face. Sees the tiny claws on the tips of her legs, and sees how those legs move in deliberate concert. She’s lovely. Martin has always thought so, even when the rest of the world grimaced. Even when his mom looked at her and only saw his dad’s orb weaver daemon.

This time, when Martin goes to touch her, he thinks _She’s mine. She’s me. I’m taking her back from you._ He rests his fingers on her abdomen and it _hurts,_ like pins and needles in a sleeping limb only worse, sharp and cold. Celidae feels it too, curled up tense and small under him. But Martin doesn’t pull away. Being with other people hurts, being with yourself can hurt, but he made a choice when he properly saw Jon.

And just like that choice he made in the fog, Martin isn’t alone. Jon was there, holding Celidae close but not touching her, so careful with her in the half broken box. Now he leans into Martin, a firm and grounding weight on his side, and Zotru holding Celidae up. Celidae leans, just slightly, into his touch. It’s already so much, feeling her so keenly after so long away. But it’s not enough, even though it's too much.

Martin holds out his other hand to her, palm up. Just above Zotru’s head.

For a long, long moment, no one moves. Jon and Zotru don’t move the way foundations don’t move, steadfast in their support. Martin doesn’t move the way you don’t move after asking a difficult question. Celidae doesn’t move because she is frozen. Caught between two outcomes. Through their frayed connection he catches her stillness. Her conflict. He can’t move closer and force her, it’s wrong. In this moment they’ve made, this tiny ritual, the rules say pretty emphatically that Martin can offer, and nothing more. It’s not up to him right now.

But it's not Celidae that moves first.

Zotru raises up. Just slightly. Just enough.

Her fur makes contact and Martin exhales like he’s been punched in the gut. Jon grips him tighter, a small noise Martin can’t interpret leaving his lips. The sensation of it is impossible. Martin feels that bit of fur and skull on the back of his fingers right through to the core of him, warm and so full of love. It’s so intense it borders on pain, but that pain is clarifying. Being held so tight and close your ribs creak, or a hand pulling you to safety.

_We’re here, and we have you._

Martin and Celidae will never doubt that again. He wonders if this is how Jon feels when he Knows something. He doesn't think so. Something born from fear could never be this warm.

Martin’s hand is level with Celidae now. She doesn’t have to reach a leg up to climb onto him. One leg at a time she climbs, pulling herself to the palm of his hand.

“Hey there,” Martin says softly.

“Hello,” she says back.

“I missed you.”

“I did too.”

He raises her up to his eye level. “We’re both pretty different now, huh?”

“Yes.”

He nods.

“I... Martin I don’t _hate_ you. Not really. But-- I’m hurt.”

“I know.”

“This isn’t fixed.”

“I know.”

“We were _not_ handling it.”

Martin laughs. “Yeah, yeah. That’s true.” He considers. “Are we handling it now?”

“Starting to, I think.”

She raises up a leg. “Do you think…?”

“Of course. Of course.”

And Martin lifts her to his hair. She climbs into his curls and settles in. Not like she never left. There’s tension there, and wounds that need healing. The sensation that used to be second nature feels strange. Still prickling with the cold of the Lonely. But she does settle, and looks down at Jon and Zotru from her perch.

Jon’s smiling. A wide grin Martin isn’t used to seeing on his face, but one he desperately wants to get used to seeing. “I missed seeing her there,” he says. “It’s. You. So very you.”

Martin can’t not kiss Jon after he says _that._ So he does. Soft and slow, like the sun that’s finally retreated below the horizon, leaving Jon and Martin in the glow of twilight. Zotru curls up in Martin’s lap, purring like a car engine. The blanket is between them now, but that almost doesn’t matter. Him and Jon are tangled close together, body and souls. Warm, safe, and healing.


End file.
